How to Make Homemade Marinara Tomato Sauce

It's fairly easy to turn your homegrown garden tomatoes into a delicious, fresh marinara sauce to serve with pasta.

Things You'll Need

• Tomatoes
• Red onion
• Garlic
• Olive Oil
• Condiments

Instructions

1. First you should take all of your tomatoes and rinse them off under cold water. Preheat your oven to 375 degrees. Drizzle some olive oil onto a baking sheet. Begin cutting the tomatoes in halves and place them onto the baking sheet.

2. Once you fill up the baking sheet with tomato halves, drizzle some olive oil on top of the tomatoes, sprinkle on some salt and pepper, and put into the oven to roast. Let these roast for about 15 minutes.

3. Remove them from the oven and place into a sauce pot on the stove. Set the stove heat on low and turn the oven off.

4. Continue to cut halves of tomato, removing any green or white parts from the center or top of the tomato. Pour the halves into a good blender and blend the tomatoes. This should give you a nice pinkish red tomato paste. Pour the paste into the sauce pot on top of the tomatoes you roasted and stir. Your homemade tomato sauce is beginning to take form.

5. Continue to cut halves of tomato and blend them. But this time add in some peeled garlic cloves to the blender too. Also, take a red onion, peel it, cut it and put it into the blender as well. Once these contents are well blended together, dump them into the sauce pot.

6. Continue blending tomatoes until your don't have any left or until you can't fit any more into your sauce pot. Depending on how much sauce you are making or on personal tastes, you may need to add more garlic cloves or onion.

7. Sprinkle in dried basil leaves. Stir.

8. Add 2-3 tablespoons of sugar per 10 cups of marinara sauce.

9. Add small pinches of salt and pepper to your tomato sauce to taste.

10. Bring contents of the saucepan to a boil while stirring frequently. Allow the tomato sauce to remain on a slow, rolling boil for some time, but continue to stir it.

11. After your tomato sauce cooks down a bit, let it simmer on low heat for an hour or two. The more water you allow to simmer out, the better your tomato sauce will taste.

Tips & Warnings

• Remember to stir your sauce frequently.

• If you don't have an onion, you can substitute onion salt or minced onion.

• San Marzanos are widely considered to be the best tomatoes to use for sauce.